


Standing Still

by LittleLeeeLoo



Series: TravelingMerchant Oneshots [3]
Category: The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords
Genre: Angst, Blood, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, TravelingMerchantAU, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Vio-centric, start of an eating disorder, start of self-harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:26:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27001942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleLeeeLoo/pseuds/LittleLeeeLoo
Summary: Dealing with the end of the war by himself leaves Vio facing things he never thought he would have to deal with. The memories are to powerful to overcome and sometimes he finds himself drowning in his own mind.
Series: TravelingMerchant Oneshots [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1877419
Comments: 6
Kudos: 39





	Standing Still

The first couple of weeks of Vio’s departure had gone slowly. He was able to ration out the food and money enough to sustain life and used his survival book to forage for berries and other fruits and vegetables. 

He had originally started with killing game, but the moment his arrow shot through the air and plunged itself into a helpless rabbit, his stomach turned. Walking up to the slightly struggling animal, Vio watched as the agony washed over the terrified animal. Watched as it let out pained squeaks, watched as it bleed onto the forest floor before twitching one last time and falling still and silent. Its dead eyes stared into his soul and all he could think of was all the people that had fallen in the war, their carcasses littering the grounds. Their souls are forever gone. Blood painting every surface and the fresh stench of burnt flesh and hair. 

The reminder that he had intentions of skinning this rabbit and put it on the fire brought back the memory of the smell. The smell of death that was permanently burned into the back of his mind and he gags once before running two steps to the side and heaving out his breakfast. One, two, three heaves and he’s feeling empty and dehydrated, the mess over the ground. He stared at it in shock, because he had never once had such an aversion to meat before but one glance at the bloodied and dead rabbit had him heaving again. 

He couldn’t do it. The thought of touching the dead had his skin crawling. He scratched at his arm and tried not to look at the phantom blood he knew covered his hands. He pushed himself to his feet, unable to bare glancing at the rabbit again before making his way back to the river to wash the blood from his hands and the sour taste from his mouth. 

No matter how far he walked though, those dead eyes followed him, staying behind his eyelids every time he so much as blinked and continued to make his stomach roll uncomfortably. Washing his hands in the water played tricks with his eyes, turning the water pink.

He hated every moment of this. 

He logically knew that he did not have blood on his hands, but his mind continuously insisted that he did. He felt like it was caked on him, dried and flaking off like he had personally been the one to slew the hundreds of people instead of the monster army and the dragon that leveled the villages. He hated how the smell stuck to the back of his nose making him dry heave again and make him want to claw out his eyes in frustration. 

Was this guilt? It was absolutely unbearable. 

But he had done the right thing….

...Hadn’t he? 

He had pulled the necessary sacrifices to help the whole of Hyrule because to believe that there would not be death in a war was entirely fantasy. He was being realistic- so why was it haunting him? Why did it feel like the souls of every death he witnessed were hidden behind the eyes of an innocent rabbit? Why did ripping the life from his meal hurt so bad? To not eat would be wasteful. To leave it there would be cruel. He was against hunting for sport, but leaving the rabbit untouched would lead to others believing that that’s what he had done. 

The thought of going to the rabbit again made his stomach lurch once more. Cupping up some water, he splashed his face a couple of times, trying to cool himself down and break him out of whatever nasty mind set he was in. He logically shouldn’t be this worked up- it shouldn’t matter, but his mind was saying it did and no matter how much he tried to talk sense to it, the less it seemed to want to register. 

Murderer. Killer. Scum. Traitor. 

He slapped the water, trying to cover the ruckus in his mind that refused to be silenced. 

Vio stayed there for a while, not caring about the water that soaked his pants or the chill that raised up through his arms as his hands stayed buried in the water that chilled with the setting sun. The fish had calmed eventually and were back swimming against the current and Vio’s empty stare turned into a hungry one as the fog in his mind steadily lifted out of his vision. 

Fish were food… He stared at them for a while before slowly pulling his hands out of the water to grab his bow and arrow. It didn’t take long to notch an arrow and aim it at a fish, but his hands trembled so terribly and the image of the dead rabbit, the dead people, and the smell had him slowly lowering his bow once more, his stomach churning as he sat back onto the riverbank and buried his face in his hands. 

What was wrong with him? 

This wasn’t at all fair… All he wanted to do was eat… he knew he needed the protein… but the blood. The blood. No. He couldn’t do it. He didn’t want to see it. 

Vio dug his nails into his scalp trying to ground himself- to make his mind stop thinking about these phantom red stains, and it might have helped a little bit, but it didn’t at all ease the emptiness in his stomach. He hated himself. He hated this literal insane person he believed he was becoming. He pulled at his hair and the sharp pain was enough to dull his mind the slightest bit enough for him to get up and walk some ways from the river to set up a quick camp. 

Despite feeling so empty, the idea of eating repulsed him. 

It was so illogical. Night crept up far too quickly. It felt like he had jumped through time and the bitter cold had seeped into his joints enough to make him numb. He didn’t know if he welcomed the quiet in his mind for the numbness in his limbs, but right now he would consider it a blessing in disguise. 

With the night upon him, he stripped down and fell into a restless sleep, reliving the massacres atop a dragon and the fires that danced behind his eyelids.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think! And if you have any ideas, I'm always open to suggestions! I have a few more filler oneshots before we get to Shadow, so let me know what you guys want to see!


End file.
